Why Just Having A Website Is Not Enough

Why Just Having A Website Is Not Enough

Here at Pitch215, we take pride in the fact that we design beautiful, engaging websites. While the look, feel, and layout of a website should be top-notch, there is a lot more that businesses need to take into consideration when having their first website created. Too often, businesses make the mistake of putting their entire budget into the design of a site, with nothing left to market it. This is often a fatal flaw. There are numerous myths and misconceptions that many startups have when it comes to their website and online marketing, and it is important that we lay them out:

1. If We Build It, They Will Come

Many business owners mistakenly believe that by simply having a professional website created, potential customers and clients will come flooding in. While having a website is absolutely essential for any new business, that website in and of itself will not bring a single person to their door. Why? Let’s look at what a website is. A website is a “virtual brochure” for your business. It is an address on the internet that shows off your product or services to individuals online. It includes important information for your business including descriptions of what you offer, what your business is about, and contact information. It may even sell that product directly on the website.

Now, let’s think about how individuals come to find websites for services or products. For further discussion, let’s say that you are a plumber in New York, and you just had a shiny, brand new, top of the line website made. One that looks better then all of your competitors. Your potential clients in Manhattan who need a plumber hop onto Google and do a quick search for plumbers in New York, or some other variation of this search. To your dismay, your website is nowhere to be found on the first page. Further distressing is that it is not on the second, third, fourth, or fifth either. Not suprisingly, you are getting no visitors to your site. Why? Because there are thousands of other plumbers in New York with websites whom have taken steps to make their site authoritative and relevant to certain important keyword searches. Having a website, in and of itself, does nothing to help you rank for specific keywords. Once you have a website, you need to have a company that specializes in search engine optimization help do the work on-site and off-site that is needed for it to start ranking on Google.

2. The Better A Site Looks, The Higher It Ranks

Suprisingly (or maybe not so suprisingly), I often hear from clients that they have been told by so and so that they do not have to worry about SEO because they will build them the best looking website out there, and therefore, it will rank at the top of Google. This could not be more wrong. In fact, often the top results are very outdated, terrible looking websites. The aesthetics of a website have absolutely nothing to do with Google’s search engine algorithm that determines where to rank it.

3. If A Website Mentions A Keyword, It Will Rank For It

Again, another myth. There are two critical facets to getting a website to rank on Google: authority and relevancy. Each page on a website should be relevant to the keyword that you want to rank for. With that being said, “mentioning” that keyword on a particular page is one, small, part of SEO. It is accurate that it is good practice to have the Title Tag, meta description, header tags, and body all make mention of that keyword. However, this alone will do very little, to nothing, for ranking the site and getting traffic. Why? It ignores the more important aspect of SEO, which is building authority to your domain.

If you are a startup, building a website, alone, will not get you business. Prior to hiring a web design agency you need to be sure that they are not only going to be providing you with a top of the line website, but with a strategic, long term, SEO plan so that your target audience will be seeing that beautiful website that you paid so much money for.

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